Be the Leader: Make the Difference

Rating:
Summary: Very useful and practical!!
Review: "Today's competitive and demanding business world requires people throughout an organization to step up and take on a leadership role. I believe everyone has untapped leadership abilities." -Paul B. Thornton

Paul B. Thornton is a trainer and speaker specializing in the areas of management, leadership and team building. Since 1980, he has trained over 7,000 supervisors and managers to be more effective leaders. He also has a background in strategic and succession planning. He also conducts seminars on leadership and presents a keynote speech titled "Be the Leader, Make the Difference."

"Be the Leader Associates" helps companies select and develop great leaders. They work with senior management to establish success profiles for their companies.

Mr. Thornton has successfully analyzed "leadership." He has found the common threads that leaders possess. He presents case studies, inspirational quotes, a leadership survey and leadership questions in a well-organized and thorough compilation of leadership ideas.

Winning leaders do three things:

They Challenge the status quo
They build Confidence in others
They Coach people on what to do and how to do it

In the first section of this book, Paul describes the leadership model and explains what leaders do in performing each of their key roles. In the second section, he provides a more in-depth discussion of various techniques leaders can use to challenge people. In the third section he shows how leaders can help build confidence in their associates. Sections four, five and six gives examples, discusses setting an example and identifies resources to help develop leadership skills.

The Contents Include:

I. Introduction - What is the 3-C Leadership Model

II. Challenging the Status Quo - Challenging visions, demanding the impossible, asking challenging questions, creating a culture of continuous improvement, argue with success.

III. Building Confidence - Expanding people's self-image, keeping ownership where it belongs, empowering your people, recognizing good or improved performance, driving out fear.

IV. Coaching to Achieve Top Performance - Finding the right balance, helping people think for themselves, showing what good performance looks like, being a facilitator and giving feedback.

V. Setting the Example - Leading yourself and others and case studies that apply the 3-C leadership model.

VI. Leadership Development.

"Leaders provide the challenge, confidence, and coaching people need to achieve their best performance." -Paul B. Thorton

By reading this book, you will also realize why it is best to:

Stop shooting the messenger
Not punish the risktakers
Upgrade knowledge and skills
Realize some fear can be healthy
Not be satisfied with success

Examples of the leaders discussed include Socrates, Debbie Fields, Don Shula, Pat Summitt, Mahatma Gandhi, Jan Carlzon, Tom Phillips, Will Schutz, Bill Gates, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Betsy Barnard, Pat Riley, Joel Barkier, Carol Barty, Alfred P. Sloan, Geroge David, Bob Galvin, Thomas Edison, Jamie Escalante, Dr. W. Edwards Deming and General Normal Schwartzkopf. There are also interviews with Mike Hays, Ruth Branson and Dan Kelly that show how various leaders have applied the 3-C leadership model.

A must-read for anyone looking for a practical leadership model. This book has the ingredients needed to produced effective leaders and is for anyone who wishes to learn how to lead.

The best book on leadership I've ever read!

Also look for:

Lessons from the Best Managers
The Answers are on the Office Wall

Rating:
Summary: weLEAD Book Review from the Editor of leadingtoday.org
Review: Be The Leader is an easy-to-read publication that gets to the heart of modern day leadership. Paul Thornton uses his years of experience as a trainer and consultant to write a practical book that clearly makes sense of the complex qualities of leadership. Be The Leader is composed of six (VI) parts. The author begins his introduction by stating, "Leadership requires someone who has the desire and willingness to initiate action, make decisions, and take risks others don't want to face".



Part 1 is essential to appreciating the main focus of the book. It describes the unique 3-C Leadership Model as outlined by the author. The 3-C's are challenge, confidence and coaching. These are defined as 3 basic things that leaders do. Thornton discusses why and how these variables interact and how you as a leader can use it as "a basic formula for leadership success". The author concludes each part of the book with case studies to illustrate the pragmatic applications of his main concepts. Other parts of the book are equally valuable and include subjects such as challenging the status quo, building confidence in others, coaching to achieve top performance, setting the example by leading yourself and others. Part VI is an especially strong conclusion regarding personal leadership development. Paul Thornton challenges the reader to stretch their boundaries and implement a "practice-feedback-revisions cycle" to perfect their leadership skills. The book ends with a Be The Leader Survey and a self-analysis.



Be The Leader is a quick yet meditative reading about developing leadership in yourself and others. It gets to the point in a succinct no-nonsense way written by someone whose personal experience is readily reflected in its pages.


Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended - Especially for New or Aspiring Leaders
Review: Finally, here is an author who not only understands what matters most in leadership (and in developing new leaders) but also provides true, practical value for the reader. There are so many books on leadership out there, I sometimes fear for the fate of Canadian forests. Being an avid reader of business books and having myself led organizations from $1 million to $3 billion, I have rarely found an author who can effectively address leadership issues.

In "Be the Leader: Make the Difference," Paul B. Thornton, an accomplished expert and author, truly gets it. He provides a clear and compelling read with a useful, distilled roadmap on how to make a genuine difference in your organization.

His book is equally useful for public, for-profit, and non-profit leaders - regardless the size of the organization. However, given the power of Thornton's model and his persuasive, real-world guidance on building and refining leadership skills, this book would be particularly helpful for new or aspiring leaders.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended - Especially for New or Aspiring Leaders
Review: Finally, here is an author who not only understands what matters most in leadership (and in developing new leaders) but also provides true, practical value for the reader. There are so many books on leadership out there, I sometimes fear for the fate of Canadian forests. Being an avid reader of business books and having myself led organizations from $1 million to $3 billion, I have rarely found an author who can effectively address leadership issues.

In "Be the Leader: Make the Difference," Paul B. Thornton, an accomplished expert and author, truly gets it. He provides a clear and compelling read with a useful, distilled roadmap on how to make a genuine difference in your organization.

His book is equally useful for public, for-profit, and non-profit leaders - regardless the size of the organization. However, given the power of Thornton's model and his persuasive, real-world guidance on building and refining leadership skills, this book would be particularly helpful for new or aspiring leaders.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, Sensible, and Eminently Practical
Review: There are several excellent books about leadership which have been written primarily for the relatively inexperienced executive and this is one of the best, as is Thornton's subsequently published The Triangles of Management and Leadership. I do not damn with faint praise when sharing that observation. Over the years, working with young executives to accelerate the development of their leadership and management skills, I soon became convinced that they lacked sufficient real-world business experience and a consequent frame-of-reference. Thornton provides the latter in this book and in The Triangles of Management and Leadership.

He carefully organizes his material within six Parts: a brief Introduction which literally introduces his "3-C Leadership Model," Challenging the Status Quo, Building Confidence, Coaching to Achieve Top Performance, Setting the Example, and finally, Leadership Development. It is important for relatively inexperienced executives (leadership wannabes) to keep in mind that, throughout his narrative, Thornton is building a model of superior leadership so that those who read his book can gain an awareness of areas in which to improve, and, to learn specifically how to achieve such improvement. This same model will enable supervisors to clarify (perhaps even reconsider) their own criteria when measuring the performance of those for whom they are responsible, then address more effectively those areas in which there is greatest need for improved performance. So, what I am now suggesting is that this book can be of substantial value to anyone who has not as yet become a superior leader.

A few brief comments on the "Be the Leader Survey" which Thornton includes after the final chapter. Respondents are asked to evaluate themselves within seven categories which correlate with the information Thornton has previously provided. I wish more authors of business books would include such a self-audit. The results are never wholly definitive, of course. (How could they be?) Nonetheless, several of Thornton's key points will be re-emphasized as respondents measure themselves in relation to them.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Joan Magretta's What Management Is as well as just about anything written by Warren Bennis, David Maister's Practice What You Preach, Jeffrey J. Fox's How to Become a Great Boss, Rex P. Gatto's The Smart Manager's F.A.Q. Guide, Steven Silbiger's The Ten Day M.B.A, Milo Sobel's. The 12-Hour MBA, Robert F. Bruner et al's, The Portable MBA, and Nitin Nohria's The Portable MBA Desk Reference.

Rating:
Summary: Very useful and practical!!
Review: This book is full of great examples that are easy to follow. I read it all the way through once, and then went back and picked sections to concentrate on. It is easy to read and has practical tips and ideas instead of some other business/leadership books that are more fluff than anything else. I highly recommend this book to anyone in a leadership role.